


Human Voices Wake Us

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [47]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: (Harvey gets to be a sort of grouchy uncle), Earth-3, Families of Choice, Fear of Mind Control, Gen, Guilt, Harm to Children, Identity Issues, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Jason Todd is a Talon, Jason Todd may or may not suspect himself of being Jason Vorhees, Mirror Universe, Origin Story, Owlman is a monster, Past Brainwashing, healing factor, how it happened, medicalized torture, mention of Martian Invasion, preparing countermeasures against yourself, with a lot of minions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 14:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7512577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason was one of twenty kids the Owls grabbed off the street, when Owlman wanted a new Talon. He was the only survivor.</p><p>That was a heavy little sentence, but Jason had never felt like it was <em>enough.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Voices Wake Us

**Author's Note:**

> Jason's character arc is infinitely interesting, but mind the warnings! Torture much less graphic and disturbing than in 'Hell's Heart,' but please note the Harm To Children. I keep wanting to dial down the awful and then going 'but what would a really evil person do?' and then Owlman does that.

Jason was one of twenty kids the Owls grabbed off the street, when Owlman wanted a new Talon.

None of them was younger than ten or older than fourteen, and they hadn't been picked completely at random—nobody mousy was there, no one whose survival strategies were all crawling and skulking and never fighting. Only two of them relied much on whoring to get by, and none of them were full-timers. Most of them had gotten themselves noticed by fighting or running well, where an Owl could see—some rare idiots, like Jason, by fighting _against_ someone with the feather tattoo. Their captors put them in a narrow stone room under the old clock tower together, and Jason still thinks it's a sign of just how fucked they all knew they were that not a single fight broke out.

Men in gray robes and white masks came for them, one by one. Sometimes they came back within about half an hour; sometimes it took two or three. None of the kids ever reappeared. Jason was thirteenth.

He was the only survivor.

That was a heavy little sentence, but Jason had never felt like it was _enough_. It didn't convey the way when they brought him into the room the bodies of the failures had been heaped in the corner. How _small_ they looked, all dozen of them stacked carelessly there, even Lynn who'd been fourteen and a woman's height already, with her nails bitten to the quick and fighting scars thick on her knuckles. She'd been seventh, and her body was almost hidden under the others, but Jason had recognized her hand spilling from the pile, hooked into a claw of agony even in death.

How he'd fought like hell and it hadn't mattered. How once he was strapped down the masks started into a prepared speech about the honor he was being granted, and how even though they tried to be portentous and impressive, even their incredibly obvious evil hadn't been able to hide that they were _bored_. That they'd been through this routine a dozen times already today, and didn't expect him to survive, and had exactly as much interest in the outcome of what they were about to do to him as the average burger joint employee had in whether you enjoyed your meal.

Or the infusion process, dozens of long, too-sharp needles thrust into the _bone_ , and then how that had rapidly become _nothing_ compared to how it felt when the masks stood back and _activated_ the stuff. For the first time Jason had been able to feel every cell in his body, every individual one, all at once, as they all _screamed_.

That had only been for an instant—the pain had melted together into a white-hot mass and then there'd been nothing else, he didn't know for how long because one of those things that he'd lost the ability to notice was _time_...

And finally, _finally_ something changed, not improved exactly but changed, because _areas_ of pain started disappearing, starting from the ends of his hands and feet and working their way in, disappearing and taking everything else with them, pieces of _him_ that felt—nothing, anymore, and he had had an endless second to register rage against how monstrously fucking _unfair_ it was that that didn't even make it hurt less, it just meant the pain was crammed into a smaller space.

A breath later, he couldn't hear his breathing, or feel the air coming down his throat. It was just him and the ball of fire that was his heart, and he thought, _this is dying, then._

And he thought, _No._

Death was right there, offering to take him away from the pain and let the shitshow that had been his life fucking _end_ already, and he refused. Pushed back, with all his strength, and it was humiliating to admit but more than anything, it might have been because of that bored-fucking-burger-joint voice coming from behind the owl mask. Because if he was going to die to people who didn't give a shit about it, he wasn't going to go easy. At least one person in the fucking world was going to give a fuck about his passing, even if it had to be him.

He pushed until the star burning at the center of him _burst,_ racing out and flinging feeling into every inch of him again, tearing and awful, and it was only then that he realized he was screaming. That he had been screaming all along, probably, and his voice was long gone.

 _"Well,"_ he heard the burger-guy voice say, with a little more interest this time, _"this one survived stage one, at least. Might as well bring the next one in, while his body adjusts for the next round."_

Jason thought _God no,_ and then, mercifully, passed out.

He thought about that day a lot, over the years. More than was healthy, a shrink would probably say—he _knew_ Harley would say. He thought about it especially when he was thinking about guilt, about responsibility. About choice.

Because he could have died, then. He'd have died a pointless little shit of a street rat, but that wasn't as worthless as he'd thought it was, back then, or as shameful. He'd have died _clean._ The option had been there, the out, dragging him down into the pitying dark, and he'd chosen to live.

Later, when—later, it hadn't so much been a choice. Oh, he'd _chosen,_ his hands on the knives, the swords, those were _his_ crimes, he wasn't trying to duck that; just because the bulk of the blame lay on the Owl didn't mean he didn't have plenty to feel guilty about. But he hadn't gotten another shot at dying.

There'd always been a _chance_ Bruce Wayne would kill him if he failed enough, if he defied enough, if he made himself useless, but not a secure enough one for him to look there for an escape. Especially with the rumor he'd heard, about decommissioned Talons, how they locked you in a coffin and you just lay there for ever and ever and ever, _not screaming, not dying._

(God, he will think later on. And it had turned out to be _true._

Jason will on that day and after be so glad that when those coffins opened and the contents spilled out, it was to fight a civil war within the Court, because if they'd been sent against him…well, they were weakened, most of them, from their time in storage, and he knows he could have won. If Drake could, did, he definitely would have. But it would have cost him. Even more than it would cost him to cut down normal people again, _good_ people, and he knows that's wrong but he doesn't care. They were like him. They didn't have a choice about what they were turned into, and if he's learned to almost believe J is right that _he_ still deserves to live after everything, then…)

It's weird. He didn't hate himself, when he was Talon. It wasn't…he couldn't afford luxuries like that, he guesses. If he hated himself for what he'd become, then on the one hand, he'd be thinking about things that might make him hate Owlman loudly enough for it to show. Which was a terrible idea. And on the other, he couldn't afford to be tearing himself down inside; he was all the ally he had.

He didn't hate himself, then. Or at least, if he did, he never thought about it. He'd made his choice, after all. He was fighting to survive.

It's different. Now that he's free.

They don't understand. None of them. Not Harley, who can read all the boo-boos on your heart like _they're_ what matters, or even Crane with his freakily narrow laser X-ray vision for what fucking _terrifies_ the shit out of you. Not Jones, who's lived his whole life with being _mistaken_ for a monster and knows how to believe it's not true no matter how confident the bitches and bastards are. Not even Karlo, whose own body freaks him out so bad even after he's been this way for years, but he's only afraid of _losing_ who he is inside, not that it isn't worth keeping.

Sure as hell not _Dent_ , who, it's hilarious, who thinks he's _so fucking bad,_ like he's got an _actual_ monster inside that he has to chain down. Because he went after a guy who screwed him over so bad—didn't even kill him, didn't even fuck him up all that bad long-term, just made him _hurt_ —because he went there into that place _one goddamn time_ , it's like he thinks he has to watch himself like he's his own fucking probation officer. Jason wants to laugh in his face— _both of 'em_ —so hard and so often he's put his teeth through his tongue a time or two. And Dent says it's not the same, because no one _made_ him cross that line, because he went there on his own, because he was an adult.

Like any of that matters.

But as much of a moralizing idiot as Dent is, he does understand about watching yourself. And he didn't trust Jason right away, just because Jokester did or because he was underage or for any other stupid reason. He waited, and he watched, until Jason had had at least an even chance to _prove_ one way or the other what he was made of.

So even though they don't like each other, it's Dent he goes to, after the Martian invasion, while he's still feeling more like a soldier than a feral animal or an unforgivably dumb kid, Dent he catches in the scrubby vacant lot out behind their new base and says, "Look, if you ever have to put me down—"

And of course _because_ Dent is a moralizing idiot, that's as far as he gets before the man breaks in with a, " _Jason,_ " and when exactly did they upgrade to first name status? Jason has the uncomfortable feeling he's a step behind in this not-relationship, like he and Dent had some kind of significant fucking conversation during the space war and it didn't make it into long-term memory because of the repeated temporary brain death.

He waves a hand to clear all that aside, and pulls a face at himself when he realizes he's picked up that gesture off of Jokester, even if it's different on him, sharp and flicking instead of that ridiculous flaily-flutter. " _If you need to put me down_ ," he repeats, "because we just went up against a telepathic army of shapeshifters, don't tell me this is never going to be a thing. There's stuff you can't come back from, and I never want to live as anybody's mindless weapon. You got that?"

Dent huffs a put-upon sort of sigh, and knuckles his forehead where the scars fade into normal skin. "Fine."

Jason nods, satisfied with that much. "Don't just assume because I stopped moving, it's done. Don't turn your back on the body. If you don't have the facilities to cremate me right away, for fuck's sake get the head and the major limbs away from each other." Dent's looking a little bit sick, but he doesn't interrupt again. "Burn it, as soon as you can. Don't even think about burial, no matter how sentimental Harley gets. Yeah? She can sentimentalize a goddamn urn."

"Are you sure that level of caution is really necessary?"

"Better safe than sorry," Jason shoots back, because it's better than coming out with any more deeply honest answer; he's laying enough of himself out already. He blows out a sigh. "I just want to make sure, if it happens, that one of you has thought through the contingencies already. I'm not easy to kill, and I'm not easy to keep that way."

And if he ever did wake up in a coffin, after something like that, either he'd still be evil and it would need to be strong to keep him in, or he'd be himself and it needed to be weak to let him break out, and he doesn't even want to think about it being the wrong way around.

"You should talk to Ed," Dent says, maybe half sarcastic. "I'm pretty sure he still writes up zombie survival protocols for fun."

"World we live in, that's not even a joke anymore." Jason snorts. "Sure, bring him in, can't hurt. I don't care. Just, if you have to put me down, _don't half-ass it_. Fuck."

He turns his back on Dent—it's a gesture he exploits the fuck out of, the way it can say anything from _you're not worth my time_ to _I'm trusting you here_ or, in this case, both—and starts to walk away. He keeps thinking he'll take up smoking again (he's pretty sure he can't get cancer anymore) and then not going through with it, because Ella follows him around _way_ too often for her own health already; he doesn't need to add secondhand smoke to her risk list.

"Just for the record," Dent says, not coming after him. "You are a seriously morbid little shit."

"But I'm right," Jason counters. And goes inside.

**Author's Note:**

> Harvey is also right.


End file.
